Article in Time: Long COVID Isn't the Only Post-Viral Illness

Sly Saint · Dec 10, 2022

In the 1980s, many people in the medical community treated chronic fatigue syndrome as a punchline. Some doctors dismissed patients’ debilitating symptoms, including crushing fatigue and crashes after exercise, as figments of their imaginations. Media outlets even dismissively nicknamed the condition “yuppie flu,” since many cases were reported among affluent white women.

In the infectious-disease clinic where Dr. Lucinda Bateman was at the time finishing her medical training, some doctors didn’t want to bother treating chronic-fatigue patients. When Bateman left to go into private practice, she remembers her old colleagues recording a message on their clinic’s answering machine, directing anyone with chronic fatigue syndrome to call Bateman so they wouldn’t have to get involved.

Despite the poor-taste joke, they were sending patients to the right person. Nothing about the condition (which is today called myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, or ME/CFS) was funny to Bateman. Her older sister developed ME/CFS after a string of health issues including strep throat and mononucleosis, and she knew how devastating it could be. Bateman dedicated her career to treating people with similar conditions and chasing the answer to a big question: why do seemingly innocuous viruses sometimes lead to devastating, long-lasting symptoms?

Almost three years into the pandemic, she has plenty of company on her quest for an answer. Millions of people around the world have developed Long COVID, or long-lasting symptoms that follow a case of COVID-19. Many of these symptoms look quite similar to the fatigue, cognitive decline, and crashes after exertion (formally known as post-exertional malaise, or PEM) observed among ME/CFS patients.
Click to expand...

https://time.com/6240058/post-viral-illnesses-common-long-covid/

rvallee · Dec 10, 2022

In the 1980s, many people in the medical community treated chronic fatigue syndrome as a punchline
Click to expand...

Cue Mitch Hedberg: they used to do that, they still do, but they used to do that, too.

Although by now it would probably be more fair to say we are a punching bag than a punchline.

Log in or Sign up

Article in Time: Long COVID Isn't the Only Post-Viral Illness

Sly Saint Senior Member (Voting Rights)

rvallee Senior Member (Voting Rights)

Share This Page

Log in or Sign up

Article in Time: Long COVID Isn't the Only Post-Viral Illness

Sly Saint Senior Member (Voting Rights)

rvallee Senior Member (Voting Rights)

Share This Page

Useful Searches